Building Stories
by Chris Ware
Pantheon, 260 pp. boxed set, $50.00
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
by Chris Ware
Pantheon, 380 pp., $35.00
The ACME Novelty Library #19
by Chris Ware
Drawn and Quarterly/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 80 pp., $15.95
The ACME Novelty Library #20
by Chris Ware
Drawn and Quarterly/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 72 pp., $23.95
The ACME Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Saturday Afternoon Rainy Day Fun Book
by Chris Ware
Pantheon, 108 pp., $27.50
Quimby the Mouse or, Comic Strips, 1990–1991
by Chris Ware
Fantagraphics, 69 pp., $14.95 (paper)
Chris Ware’s drawings are meticulous, even chilly, with flat, muted colors and the straight lines and perfect curves of an architectural rendering. The panels follow an orderly horizontal grid, but have a discomfiting tendency to occasionally shrink to near illegibility; or they might suddenly demand to be read from right to left, or even disappear entirely, to be replaced by pretty but unhelpful typography, complicated diagrams, or plans for a paper model of one of the stories’ locations. Dreams and fantasies invade the story without warning.
